Chapter 3
Aspen
The lodge has three rules posted on a chalkboard in the entry like commandments for sinners:
“Wow,” I murmur, dragging a manicured finger down the list. “Look at all this joy.”
Thorne’s voice rumbles from behind me. “They keep the place from burning down.”
I turn, flashing my brightest fake smile. “I’ll try not to ignite anything but your temper.”
He doesn’t bother to hide the way his eyes drop to my mouth. “You’re doing fine.”
“Good.” I uncap my lipstick—danger red—and paint my mouth slow, a dare disguised as routine. His gaze tracks every stroke like he wants to smudge it with his thumb. Or his mouth. “Where’s the Wi-Fi?”
“Down.” He folds his arms over his bare chest like a bouncer for the outdoors. “Storm knocked the tower out last week.”
“Okay, what about the plumbing?”
“Works if you don’t take forty-minute bubble baths.”
I cough out a laugh. “So, limited water, no internet, and a rule against fun.” I clap once. “Great. I’m thriving.”
“You look like you’ll survive.” His gaze drifts to the glitter-stuffed crate I wheeled in. “What’s in the box of doom?”
“Seasonal happiness.” I flip the lid and he actually recoils.
Inside: velvet stockings, skull garland, a string of bat fairy lights, a bundle of black tapers, two velvet pumpkins, synthetic spiderweb, and a pre-lit strand labeled BLOOD ORANGE GLOW.
“You’re not hanging that,” he says, chin jerking toward the lights.
I clutch them to my chest like a child with a stuffed animal. “Watch me.”
“Don’t.”
I plant a foot on the arm of the couch, climb, and stretch toward a timber beam. “You threatening me or flirting?”
“Both.” He moves closer, voice low. “You going to listen to either?”
“Nope.” I flick the switch. The strand washes the room in cinnabar glow and smug satisfaction. “See? Cozy, not cursed.”
He steps past me without breaking eye contact and flips the big breaker lever by the fireplace.
The entire lodge sighs into darkness.
Silence. Then my hiss. “You did not.”
His expression is the picture of innocence. “Can’t overload the system.”
“You mean your ego?” I fling the dead lights onto the couch. “Turn it back on.”
“Ask nicely.”
“Please.” I add a knife-sweet smile. “Daddy.”
Something hungry flashes across his face; then it’s gone. “Don’t call me that.” He flips the breaker. The lodge hums awake. “And don’t fry my panel.”
“I’ll control myself,” I lie.
He leans in. “Doubt it.”
I stalk to my box, fishing out a spool of webbing and the bat lights I definitely won’t plug in until he leaves. “Where’s the step ladder?”
“Kitchen.” He doesn’t move.
“Can you get it?”
“I don’t fetch.”
“You will for me.” I tip my head toward the kitchen door. “Unless you like watching me climb furniture.”
His jaw works like he’s chewing through a curse. “Don’t break your neck,” he mutters, disappearing through the swinging door.
Victory tastes like sugar skulls.
I grab the chance to plug the bats in behind the couch. The little wings flutter crimson. Petty? Yes. Worth it? Also yes.
Thorne returns with the ladder, sets it down, and pins me with a look that says he knows exactly what I did. “You’re determined to test me.”
“I’m determined to win.” I toe the ladder. “You hold. I hang.”
“Not a chance.” But he plants his palm on the top rung anyway, bracing the frame like a human anchor. I climb and feel the heat of him rise with me—cedar, smoke, stubbornness. When I lean to drape the webbing, my skirt rides. His breath catches.
“Eyes up, lumberjack,” I tease.
“They are.” His voice roughens. “You’re just in the way.”
I glance down. He’s not looking at the webbing.
My laugh comes out breathier than I intend. I twist a strand, brush the beam, and a shower of old dust rains over my shoulders. I squeal, wobble. His hand clamps my calf, steady and firm.
“Easy.” His palm slides once, slow, like he needs me to feel how strong he is. “I’ve got you.”
“Cocky,” I murmur, heart hammering.
“Capable,” he corrects, and doesn’t move until I do.
By the time I climb down, my pulse won’t settle. I hide it by straightening the velvet pumpkins and pretending the room isn’t vibrating with something dangerous.
“You done?” he asks.
“For now.” I flash teeth. “You can thank me when the lodge wins Best Dressed on HauntedStays.”
“I’ll pass.” His gaze hooks on my mouth again. “You messed up your lipstick.”
“Did I?” I swipe the corner with my thumb.
He watches, wolf-still. “Leave it.”
“Why?”
“Looks like you’ve been kissed.”
Heat slides low in my belly. I look away first.
I raid the kitchen for my emergency candy stash because sugar solves everything except the man in the other room. I set the bowl on the counter—mini Snickers, Sour Bats, wrapped caramels—and dig for a lollipop labeled POISON APPLE when the porch door creaks.
A masked bandit waddles inside.
I freeze. It freezes. We blink at each other.
“Thorne,” I whisper. “Do you have…pets?”
He appears in the doorway, brows flattening. “No.”
“Then why,” I whisper-shout, “is there a raccoon in the kitchen?”
The raccoon clocks the candy, rights its little paws like a burglar, and launches onto the counter with shocking athleticism. Skittles explode across the surface like confetti. The bowl rocks. I lunge.
“Absolutely not, sir—”
Thorne moves faster. One step, two, and he’s between me and the masked thief, big hands out like he’s facing down a suspect. “Back off,” he orders—at me.
“At me?” I sputter. “That criminal just mugged my Snickers!”
The raccoon bares teeth. Thorne bares bigger ones. For half a second, I’m sure he’s going to growl.
“Scoot,” he tells the raccoon, dead calm.
It doesn’t scoot. It takes a caramel and sits on the stove like a gremlin.
I grab the nearest weapon—a roll of paper towels—and wave it like a baton. “Shoo!”
“Try using your inside voice, witch,” Thorne says dryly, edging to the back door.
“My inside voice is extremely effective,” I inform him, then hiss at the raccoon again. “Sir. Leave.”
It hisses back. I squeak and scramble onto a chair. The chair wobbles. Thorne’s hand shoots to my waist, holding me steady like I’m a flight risk.
“Get down,” he says, voice a command I feel in my knees.
“Not until you relocate the bandit.”
He steps into the raccoon’s space without fear, opens the back door, and whistles low. A sound I don’t know lives in my bones until I hear it.
The raccoon pauses, considers, then clambers down with the caramel in its mouth and waddles toward the night like it owned the place and decided we were boring.
Thorne shuts the door and turns to me.
“Happy now?” he asks.
I slide off the chair, still breathless with adrenaline. “I was emotionally attached to those caramels.”
“You’re emotionally attached to chaos.” He tips his chin at the scattered candy. “You leave food out, you invite trouble. Rule two.”
I plant my hands on my hips. “Rule two didn’t mention cat burglars in bandit masks.”
He steps closer. I don’t back up, even when my heart does a weird flip. “Rule two assumed you had sense.”
“And you assumed you could cut my power any time I get happy.”
He almost smiles. “I can.”
“Don’t test me.”
“You’re the test.” His gaze drops to my mouth again, heated now. “You walk in, you make everything loud, and then you look at me like you want me to fail it.”
“I don’t want you to fail,” I say, softer than I mean to. “I want you to play.”
“What game?” he asks, voice unreadable.
“The one where you stop pretending you don’t like it when I push you.”
He doesn’t move for three long, pulsing seconds. Then he reaches past me, plucks the poison apple lollipop from the counter, and holds it to my lips.
“Open,” he says.
I do.
He slips the candy into my mouth slow, eyes on my lower lip as it glides over the glossy red. Heat spikes everywhere. I suck the tip on instinct.
His jaw ticks. “Inside voice,” he murmurs, like I made a sound. Maybe I did.
“See?” I manage around the sugar. “Effective.”
He takes the stick back, bites the other end clean off with a snap and tosses the stick. “Break’s over. You decorate. I work.”
“That your way of saying thank you for the theft deterrent?”
“That's my way of saying stop leaving bait.” He moves toward the door, pauses. “And lock the porch. Night brings everything hungry.”
I stare at his back. “Including you?”
He stops.
Turns.
“Especially me,” he says, and disappears down the hall.
The next hour is a standoff disguised as productivity. I hang cobwebs and rearrange the mantel three times. He repairs a hinge, tightens screws, mutters to himself like a sinner reciting prayers. Every so often we orbit close enough to brush shoulders. Every time, I feel it.
Electric, combustible, inevitable.
I’m on the step ladder again when he returns to the room, wiping his hands on a shop towel. “You’re tilting that skull like it’s flirting,” he says.
“It is flirting.” I adjust it a hair. “With your self-control.”
“Cute,” he deadpans, but he doesn’t walk away. “You sure you know what you’re doing up there?”
“Are you offering help?”
“I’m offering supervision.” He plants a hand on the ladder again.
“Bossy.”
“Capable,” he says for the second time, and I hate that the word turns my spine liquid.
I reach too far for the last hook, lose balance, and swear. His hand catches my waist, the other wrapping my thigh to steady me. For a breath, we’re chest to chest, heat to heat, nothing between us but the pretense of inconvenience.
I look down.
He’s already looking up.
“Thorne,” I say, not a warning.
“Aspen,” he answers, not an apology.
We don’t move.
Then the porch light flickers and pops with a tiny burst. I jump. He drags me off the ladder like it insulted me and sets me on my feet.
“The electrical system is old,” he says again, eyes still on my mouth. “Remember?”
“I’ll be careful,” I murmur, and I mean the electricity. I don’t mean him.
“Doubt it,” he says, softer, and backs away like it costs him.
As night falls the lodge settles into creaks and sighs. The wind scrapes the eaves like ghosts craving entry. I line velvet stockings under the mantel and tape the contest entry card—Aspen & TBD—onto the side table.
He notices. “TBD?”
“To be determined.” I shrug. “Or Thorne’s Bad Decisions.”
“That a promise or a threat?”
“Yes.”
He huffs out something that might be a laugh and might be a plea for patience from any gods who’ll listen.
“Dinner’s at six,” he says. “I’m cooking.”
“You can cook?”
He pins me with a look. “Woman, I can survive. You’ll eat.”
“Is that a threat, too?”
“It’s a guarantee.” His gaze skims my body once, thorough. “You like guarantees.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You showed up to a couples’ retreat alone with a plan to win anyway. You want certainty so bad you make it yourself.”
I swallow past the lump his accuracy forms in my throat. “And you? What do you want?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “Quiet.” He lets it hang. Then, lower: “Until you.”
The air tightens.
“You’re not quiet around me?” I ask, barely above the whisper of the fire.
He steps close, crowding my space on purpose, forcing me back until my hips bump the table and the entry card flutters to the floor. He palms the edge beside my thigh, leaning in, heat and cedar and danger surrounding me like a cloak I asked for.
“No,” he says. “You make everything loud.”
I should push him off. I don’t.
“You hate loud.”
He shakes his head once. “Not yours.”
My pulse misbehaves. “Define ‘loud.’”
His mouth tilts, wicked. “The kind that happens when you finally stop pretending you’re here for a prize.” His gaze drops, lingers, returns to my eyes like a promise. “The kind you make when you’re done playing nice.”
My breath shivers out. “You think I play nice?”
“I think you’re deciding if I’ve earned bad.”
We hover there, suspended, one breath from ruin, when the back door rattles in a gust and the porch light flickers to life again before the breaker trips with a clunk. The lamps die. The fireplace stays.
Dark wraps the room.
His body remains, shadow-solid, near enough that if I lean an inch I’ll touch him.
“Power’s delicate,” I whisper.
His laugh rumbles against my ribs. “So are some men.”
“Are you?”
“No.” He straightens, gives me space like it’s a gift and a punishment. “Lock the porch. I’ll check the generator. No more candy left out.”
I nod, throat dry.
He pauses in the doorway. Looks back. “Red looks good on you.”
“My lipstick?”
“My rules,” he says, and vanishes into the dark.
The room exhales. I sink onto the chair, heart rioting, mouth tingling, the taste of poison apple clinging to my tongue. Through the window, I catch the barest flash of his body in the snow as he checks the shed, breath steaming, shoulders carved out of shadow.
Loud, I think, pressing two fingers to my pulse.
I’m not quiet either.
And tomorrow, I’ll hang every last bat light in this place and dare him to cut the breaker again.
Let the game continue.